The Breastplate: A Civil War Adventure By Shirley McCracken

The Civil War brought them together and it would tear them apart!  Beautiful Kitty Claiborne, the pampered daughter of a wealthy senator, fell deeply in love with Lt. William Benson, attache to President Lincoln.  However, she had no idea her life would change so dramatically after they were married.  Could her love endure the hardships of life in a remote cabin when, during the war, Will was given an assignment in East Tennessee?  And why didn't her husband tell her his mission when he left her alone for weeks at a time?  Was he one of the mysterious Phantom Warriors everyone was talking about?  When he was carried home, badly wounded, by a group of strangers, would she be able to smuggle them all through enemy checkpoints to safety?  And why did she bury her husband's breastplate, from his uniform, deep in the soil on their little farm?  The Breastplate is the story of the lives and families torn apart by the Civil War, and the courage of one woman as she struggles to keep her love and family intact during such turbulent times.

This book is Historical Fiction available in paperback and e-book at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and at Outskirts Press.

Shirley McCracken is a freelance writer and poet.  Always interested in the Civil War, she was intrigued when her husband found a relic from the war on their farm.  The relic, a Union breastplate, lay undisturbed for years, but when the 150th anniversary of the war approached, she decided to write its story.  She is a registered nurse, a wife, mother of two sons, and has two young grandsons who call her "Purple."   She enjoys being outdoors and had hiked, rafted, swam, scuba-dived, cross-country skied, even dog sledded.  A horseman since her youth, she has ridden many miles on her Tennessee walking horses, Jazz and Jubilee.

~My thoughts~
I have always been interested in reading about the Civil War, fact or fiction.  This book kept me interested in the lives of the families being written about.  There were a few grammatical errors in the book, but it did not take anything away from the book itself.